Why I'm Allergic to the Word 'Curvy'

Bless Mattel for creating Barbies that reflect humanity. But I still can't get over the 'C' word.

By
Christine Friar

Jan 29, 2016

Mattel

I'm allergic to the word curvy. I know this, because when Mattel announced the release of Barbies in three new body types Thursday (petite, curvy, and tall), I couldn't enjoy the small victory for very long. In my Twitter feed, brand after brand exclamation pointed and yaaas-ed the updates, and people seemed especially amped for Curvy Barbie.

"Finally!" seemed to be the overarching sentiment, from GMA to E! to Fast Co to Time, "They heard us! She's here!"

My moods were allowed to change, and so were my opinions, but my ass somehow needed to remain a perfect, fixed point in space and time.

Baseline facts-wise, the update is great, of course. The children's brand famous for decades of portraying femininity in a very limited (white, blonde, thin) scope, is suddenly prioritizing the incorporation of people with varied body types and skin tones into kids' play lives. It's a step toward representation, and it's also a strong PR moment for a company that spent years being out of touch.

But "curvy" jumps out like a signal flare in all of the conversation, making it clear that it's not time to celebrate just yet, because we're not fully there yet.

As someone who came of age in the late '90s and early aughts, I'm very familiar with curvy. We went from living on a mainstream beauty spectrum that ran from art-thin Winona Ryder to beach-thin Jen Aniston, to suddenly having Jennifer Lopez on a red carpet in a plunging, green Versace dress. Everyone wanted to sell us curvy. Beyonce was curvy. Jessica Simpson was curvy.

But when a brand says "curvy," there's a little wink that comes with it. They never tell you outright, but they still mean, "conventionally attractive." It's a rule you learn through observation. In popular culture, "curvy" signifies a big ol' butt and boobs on an otherwise slim and toned body. Curvy is also the category where any body over a size 6 gets tossed. Size 10 or size 20, it doesn't matter—it's all one 'Flaunt your curves, mama!'

In the decade or so that I've had my adult body, depending on factors like work hours and where I've been living, I have oscillated between sizes 6 and 14. This means that, depending on what year you catch me, I could be a cardio queen, a laid-back Seamless queen, or inhabiting some hybrid middle ground. But this past year I reached a zen plateau in my relationship with my size, thanks largely in part to a comment a buddy made at a bar. When I leaned over our mulled wine and quietly revealed that I was fifteen pounds heavier than I'd been before we met, she replied, "Isn't that just having a body, though? Your weight changes."

This moment unlocked something in my brain that reading about self-love over and over again in women's personal health articles never had: Your body is an art piece about flux. It is never not reacting to things, recalibrating with the seasons, and adjusting as you get older. So why should this one metric—how many pounds I weighed—be the only factor I expected to remain a static part of my identity? My moods were allowed to change, and so were my opinions, but my ass somehow needed to remain a perfect, fixed point in space and time.

After realizing that my body would always be a weight, and there would always be the possibility of it becoming bigger or smaller, accepting it felt easy. I had been allowing part of my happiness to hinge on a broad-cultural sense of hotness when, without warning, I realized I could opt out.

Parts of this new zen state are nice: the quiet joy that comes from sliding into a pair of pants that fits and not fretting over what size they are, for instance; buying a bathing suit and not worrying if it will be the same one I wear next season or the season after that. But other parts are less fun.

Listening to other women spiral into guilt and bargaining at mealtime is hard. Think of how often you hear, "I'm so bad!" or "I'm gonna have to hit the gym to work this off!" as watercooler-level banter, when really you could be hearing, "Damn! I was hungry!" or "This thing is delicious!" Making an effort to be generous and patient with yourself can inadvertently underscore how hard the people around you are being on themselves, and how hard the culture can be on all of us. As women, we're constantly tasked with running our pleasure through the Brita filter of fuckability—so much so that we frame even basic biological processes like eating as sins and indulgences.

At the end of the day, companies like Mattel are still embarrassed to say what we need to hear from them: being fat is okay.

The stickers on jeans may say relaxed fit in 2016, and the trend toward Photoshop-free models might be catching on, but a lot of brick-and-mortar stores still only stock up to size 14. And it seems like every pile of shirts or pants on every display table still has the same size ratio: 5 million smalls, 7 million mediums, 2 larges, and a single XL. There's definitely a ton of money being spent on marketing authenticity and realness to women, but still very little being done about actually making the marketplace less hostile to women who happen to be fat.

With the favor of mainstream culture inching toward body positivity and general inclusiveness, corporate feminism remains that one auntie who gives you a sweater with a reindeer on it every Christmas. Sweet, sure, but chronically ignorant of what you might need.

At the end of the day, companies like Mattel are still embarrassed to say what we need to hear from them: being fat is okay. Having fat arms is fine. Having fat legs, or rolls on your stomach is fine. It's part of having a weight and a height and a mortal form on this earth. A fat doll wouldn't just let bigger kids know they're important enough to be represented, it might help other kids—kids who perhaps get to think about their bodies less—imagine what it'd be like to have a body that's different than their own. It lets them imagine her day. Imagine her falling in love. Imagine her doing all of the things fat people still aren't allowed to do in movies and TV and celebrity news. If play helps kids tap into their own empathy and understand the world around them, why wouldn't we want the parameters of that exercise to be as expansive and inclusive as possible? What better gift could there be?

I'm glad we have Curvy Barbie in 2016. She seems like both a cool lady and a historical addition to the toy universe. But more importantly, she makes me hopeful that maybe someday soon so many of us won't be relegated to the sidelines with "curvy." One day, maybe she'll just get to be Barbie, without any descriptor of her body tacked onto her name.

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